By Melody Simpson
Many thanks go to The Ross Foundation, a family foundation operating in the Mid-Ohio Valley region, for its recent $44,000 grant to Read Aloud West Virginia! A portion of this grant is for sustaining (or starting) Read Aloud programs in Jackson, Pleasants and Wood counties; the balance is for upgrading Read Aloud’s database. Thanks to this grant, we are completing a significant upgrade to our database program which will enable us to better track and communicate with those who are so critical to our programs’ success—our donors, volunteer readers, county coordinators and many more.
It is somewhat unusual for donors to grant funds for operating costs like salaries and technology, but Tres Ross, executive director of The Ross Foundation, recognizes the value of this type of investment. Ross, who is also involved with the West Virginia Nonprofit Association and Philanthropy West Virginia, has broad experience with what makes nonprofits successful. “I know many funders are hesitant to support overhead,” Ross commented, but said he has come to realize that nonprofit organizations need financial resources to grow their programs, and things like quality staff and technology are critical to this success.
“Over the years,” Ross noted, “I realized that ‘what you get is what you pay for.’ If you want to grow an organization and have it become a key player in the community, then you need to pay for that quality staff to implement programs.” A Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Why Can’t We Sell Charity Like We Sell Perfume?” reinforced his thoughts on nonprofit funding needs.
In 2013, three leading sources of information about U.S. charities—BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator, and GuideStar—jointly wrote an open letter to charitable donors called “The Overhead Myth.” After noting the tendency of donors to focus too much on the percentage of expenditures going toward administrative and fundraising costs when deciding which charities to support, they assert that many charities should actually spend more on overhead than they do, in areas such as training, planning, evaluation and internal systems to increase their charitable impact. The open letter includes some surprising statistics on the importance of spending on overhead, and the danger of underinvesting in the type of critical infrastructure that keeps a nonprofit healthy and successful. For more information on this joint letter, see http://overheadmyth.com/.
Read Aloud’s programs, and their success, depend on educating parents, teachers, school administrators, and businesses about the critical importance of modeling the joy of reading to encourage children to want to learn to read. They also depend on recruiting, training, supporting, retaining, and tracking volunteer readers across West Virginia, and on creating, training, supporting, retaining, and sustaining strong county chapters (currently 30 and counting). Our “output,” while including some tangible items like books to distribute, is largely reflected in intangibles: Read Aloud conferences which reenergize county chapters and volunteers and help them share ideas; schools which welcome volunteer readers into their classrooms; trained volunteer readers who dependably show up each week to share their love of books; and ultimately, in more children learning, and loving, to read. All these may then be reflected in rising reading scores in schools and counties which have vibrant Read Aloud programs. But none of this happens without mundane “overhead-type” investments—like upgraded database software.
The Ross Foundation “gets it.” For this, we are exceedingly grateful.
Melody Simpson is an attorney at Bowles Rice LLP, a volunteer reader and a member of the Read Aloud West Virginia board and newsletter committee.